Forty Days of Dating

“What do you do when you’re tired of the prospect of dating?”

Show me an adult who claims to have never pondered this question and I’ll show you someone who is lying to you. While many have wondered, few have set out to find the answer. Fewer still have decided to do this following an experimental design. Enter “Forty Days of Dating.”

Jessica Walsh and Timothy Goodman are two NYC based designers and friends with opposing relationship problems. As an experiment, the hopeless romantic (she) and the uncertain commitment-phobe (he) decided to date each other for 40 days – supposedly the amount of time it takes to break a bad habit. Sound like a total trainwreck? It kind of is, but that’s what makes it so interesting.

Though the 40 days were completed in the spring, Jessica and Tim are now posting the daily questionnaires they filled out one day at a time. It’s about halfway through and I’m entirely addicted. The posts have filled the need for “will-they-or-won’t-they” drama in my life, left vacant by my inability to sit still for a full two hours of “The Bachelorette.”

While I’m not sure I’d ever advise anyone to follow suit, the ups and downs of this friend/relationship hybrid are certainly entertaining from an outside perspective. As a bonus, each post is accompanied by a series of creative illustrations that visually represent different moments on the journey.

Whether these 40 days result in a lifetime of happiness or a lifetime of awkward avoidance, I’ll be anxiously awaiting each post until the final one on August 18th.